Unforgiven

I saw a really odd movie the other night and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I'll admit that I have some strange tastes and I prefer to watch obscure artistic films occassionaly. My girlfriend Sarah frowns upon my choices most of the time, but honestly she can't complain too much because our interest in each other began when we discovered we both loved a largely unknown movie named The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Anyway, that's a whole different story - back to the topic at hand.

The movie I saw was called The Woodsman. In this film Kevin Bacon plays a convicted pedophile who is released from prison after 12 years and is trying to rebuild his life.

Kevin Bacon did a great acting job in the film, but I couldn't quite grasp where it was all leading. It ended up being one of "those" movies that doesn't really have a story to tell and only succeeds in making you feel like you've just wasted 2 hours of your life afterwards. The movie boldly addressed delicate subject matter...but why, other than to make us squirm in our seats? There's no act of redemption or profound lesson learned by the end of the film...and it got exceptionally good reviews for the most part.

This brings us to the title of my post, "Unforgiven". The movie portrays Kevin Bacon's character as a victim (some people will disagree), which I completely don't go with. That characterization made me start wondering at what point can you forgive someone for committing a taboo act, if ever? In our legal system forgiveness can be measured by years in a prison term, but for humans forgiveness can take much longer. If someone is a convicted pedophile can you ever truly feel "alright" about them and treat with the same respect you would give to anyone else?

I don't think I can...or would...and I'm pretty liberal.

I say fuck pedophiles, fuck them right in the ear.

Maybe someone could explain the point of this movie to me (because I obviously missed it) and tell me if it involved anything besides the message that "Pedophiles are people too".